Parenting – Page 9

British Government Blocks UK Resident’s Return Home From Gitmo – Because He’s Been In Gitmo

Published on June 15, 2007

Kafka is alive and well and working for the Home Office. From the Independent:

Guantanamo inmate told: You can’t return to UK, you’ve been away too long By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
Published: 15 June 2007

Gordon Brown is being urged to intervene to stop the Home Office banning a British resident from returning home after more than four years at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

Campaigners expressed fury after ministers said Jamil el-Banna’s permission to stay in Britain had lapsed during the four-and-a-half years he has been held without charge at the US detention camp. [My emphasis]

Mr Banna’s son, Anas, 10, will deliver a letter to Gordon Brown today, asking the prime minister-in-waiting to let his father return home for Father’s Day on Sunday. Anas asked Mr Brown:

“I hope you won’t say that my dad was away from the country for more than two years as they say. My dad was only out of the country because he was locked up over there. They stopped him from coming back to us. Now my Dad can leave and we hope he comes back to us. I hope he comes back to us before 17 June, before Father’s Day. Every year this day is very sad for us. I hope that this year, this day will be the best day of my life.”

Mr Banna was arrested in The Gambia in 2002 with another former Guantanamo detainee, Bisher al-Rawi, who has been freed. The two men had travelled to west Africa to set up a peanut processing plant but were arrested and taken to Afghanistan and Guantanamo after an MI5 tip-off.

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Finally, An Outbreak Of Clue

Published on June 7, 2007

Connecticut ‘Porn Popup” trial teacher Julie Amero has won a retrial, with the help of geekdom:

A US judge yesterday ordered a retrial of a schoolteacher found guilty of computer porn charges after a sustained campaign by internet specialists proclaiming her innocence.

Julie Amero, 40, was convicted in January of being responsible for a series of sex advertisements that popped up on a classroom computer and were seen by pupils, in a case that has caught nationwide attention and raised important questions about content control on computers.

The prosecution at the trial in Connecticut had claimed she must have clicked on the websites for the adverts to begin appearing. But after the trial, 28 computer science academics in the state sought to prove that the rapid-fire sequence of pop-up sex advertisements could have appeared automatically.

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Common sense 1, stupidity 0.

Watch Out, Watch Out, Holiday Snap Thief About

Published on June 6, 2007

Ananova:

Teen found herself on porn cover

A 17-year-old Staffordshire student is taking legal action after finding her photograph on the front cover of a porn film.

The snap of Lara Coton – taken on a family holiday when she was just 14 – was being used by US adult entertainment firm TVX Films for Body Magic.

Last year Lara e-mailed the picture to an art website, which displays work from photography students across the UK, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Her mother, Christine, had taken the photograph inside their hotel room in Blackpool in 2004. She captured her daughter wearing a black top hat and black dress.

Lara, of Tamworth, Staffs, found the photograph on the front of the American porn film earlier this year after a friend tipped her off.

She said: “I was horrified when I found out it was being used to sell a porn film.”

She wants compensation for her image being used without consent.

TVX Films claims it was entitled to use the picture because Lara had put it in the ”public domain” but has agreed to change the cover.

Oooh, Matron: Comedy Double, Bumper Sex Ed Edition

Published on June 1, 2007

Today’s comedy double is all about sex education The first group is a collection of public service safe sex and condom ads from all over the world, and because they’re ads they’re pretty much worksafe, depending on how tightassed your boss is – or you are, if you’re working from home. But then if you’re such a tightass, what on earth are you doing here?

The bonus clips are longer and much more graphic, though equally funny. Probably not safe for any workplace though. The cats had to go and hide in the bathroom at one point, poor sensitive loves.

On with the motley then.

I love condom ads; unwritten boundaries of sexual taste and decency vary so widely from country to country, testing the transgressive creativity of ad-makers to the benefit of us viewers. So to soften you up for the condomfest to come here’s a sex-ed ad from Canada and oh god, we’ve all been at this school event or something very like it:

An ad like this next one, also from Canada, might prove more effective in its aim. Works for me.

First the stick, then the carrot, hur hur; from South Africa comes a condom ad that does it with subtlety, style, humour and ooh, eyecandy:

Then there’s the typically idiosyncratic Dutch approach. I’ve never seen them do this on KLM, though I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they did:
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But some people really do need the message hammered home, if you see what I mean and I think you do.

If you’re male and at all sensitive about the family jewels, I’d suggest you don’t watch this next one, or maybe you could watch it from safely behind your chair. How not to test a condom:

Right, now that we’ve got our condoms and know how to use them, it might be wise to use them responsibly. This one’s from France on the side-effects of easily available contraception:

It’s funny, but I’m not sure exactly what they’re saying there – that contraception makes women bad mothers?

Now for the bonus clips: they’re quite long, so you might want to save them for your lunch break or at home. First, Family Guy on abstinence ed:

Abstinence, schmabstinence. You might as well ask a cat not to lick its itching nads as to ask a teenager to be sexually abstinent. But they tried, and still do: here’s a mashup of American ’50s sex-ed films:

I dunno though, sometimes understanding parents can be worse. Much worse….

That is one of the most cringe-worthy things I’ve seen in a very long time.

Far from hymning abstinence or trumpeting fake understanding, this next ad takes humourous acceptance of sexual diversity to whole new levels. I don’t think they’ll be seeing this one in Kansas, do you? What a great ad though:

The last bonus clip is an animated short which I think may be Czech: it’s pretty sexually graphic so definitely not safe for work, but what an excellent safe sex video, funny and touching with great animation.

Now my work here is done, mwahahaha. I’m off to sit in the garden in the sun for a while, at least until disturbed by local cat politics in action.

De Haut En Bas

Published on May 30, 20072 Comments

Is it just me, or does this read as horribly condescending?

Kactus, one of my super-favorite babymama blog crushes who needs a wider audience, has chronicled her experiences using food stamps for the last five weeks (although I think I lost week 4): Week One, Week One Part II, Week One Part III, The Meat Deal Is A Big Deal, Week Three: The Month So Far, Week Five.

I do urge you to read the posts despite the twee intro: everyone should know exactly how it is many of us survive these days and not only that, learn how to do it themselves. The good times won’t last forever, and poverty isn’t a moral fault, it’s just shitty circumstances. This whole ‘you are poor you must have brought it on yourself’ schtick is a crock of shit designed to assuage others’ greed and guilt.

There but for sheer blind good fortune go you, no matter how much you might like to tell yourself it’s all your own talent, charm and all-round coolness. No-one is secure: even if you’re in an open-ended salaried job with benefits and no dependents, you’re still likely to be only a couple of month’s salary or a major illness away from penury. But with a job of the uncertain, badly paid type that are available these days and dependents, you’re fucked – unless you’re a very, very clever manager, which Kaktus obviously is, as well as being a talented writer. The fact that she finds time to write at all is a bloody miracle. What she’s doing is feminism in the raw and I know because I’ve done it too.

So to describe Superbabymama not as a fellow grown woman and a writer but as a “super-favorite babymama blog crush” – well, to me it gives off an air of magnolias; but then maybe I have a sensitive nose. But I still can’t help but be reminded of Reese Witherspoon in full on “aren’t I cute while being so sweet to the help’ mode.

But like I said, maybe it’s just me. I’m English and class skirmishes make my atennnae go up.